PHIZ KALIFA posted:I would be down with playing a Land Titan who has to out-write another were-elephant on Elephant Erotica. A PBP Achewood setting game might be really fun.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 14:50 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 14:05 |
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Barbed Tongues posted:I would! I enjoy the LARP format as a theater-style game, but American versions have a lot of inherent problems that crop up over and over, so a lot of them either start toxic, or quickly spiral into a similar kind of toxicity that has justifiably ruined the format for a lot of people. I still hold out hope of organizing a mature* game someday that tries to minimize those toxins, so especially any meta-organization details are particular interesting to me. To be fair I've seen a few people throw hissy fits and quit the MES over them having implemented an official red-card thing last week
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 15:47 |
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Mister Olympus posted:To be fair I've seen a few people throw hissy fits and quit the MES over them having implemented an official red-card thing last week Which I don't understand. Well, I understand that having your character's narrative style or gaming experience limited by other player's needs can feel like a loss. But I don't understand why people believe 'their story' should trump another player's actual psychological concerns about participating in dark/difficult/traumatic topics.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 16:43 |
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Because a lot of people in old-school Vampire LARP circles are very invested in being the ones to control and dominate other players and don't like being told to stop.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 16:45 |
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Also a lot of people misunderstand mental issues and think it's something people just need to 'get over'. Thinking someone's sad rather than depressed, or a coward rather than struggling with anxiety, etc. Add in that 'oh this is supposed to be a horror setting, you're supposed to be uncomfortable!' and you run into a mindset that can go some very bad places.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 16:53 |
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Mors Rattus posted:Because a lot of people in old-school Vampire LARP circles are very invested in being the ones to control and dominate other players and don't like being told to stop. Night10194 posted:Also a lot of people misunderstand mental issues and think it's something people just need to 'get over'. Thinking someone's sad rather than depressed, or a coward rather than struggling with anxiety, etc. Add in that 'oh this is supposed to be a horror setting, you're supposed to be uncomfortable!' and you run into a mindset that can go some very bad places. So yeah, stuff like that Ataxerxes. What do you guys do to treat those ^^ particular poisons? Either in convincing the culprits the behavior is bad, or in terms of better identifying which players need to be efficiently severed from the community? I'll admit that SweDracula's antics have tarnished my perception of the Euro-/Nordic- LARP styles a bit.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 16:59 |
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I never experienced anything like that in Stockholm by Night
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 16:59 |
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It may be more endemic to American LARP culture.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:08 |
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Dawgstar posted:For the record because we absolutely should vet our WW writers, Burgess seems like an okay dude. I've watched his Let's Play of Vampire: Bloodlines and he both knows his World o' Darkness lore and also turned up his nose at the really awful stuff in Bloodlines that did not age well so hopefully such things would not find their way into his work. It's been ages since I've played the game - do you have any examples of the stuff that aged poorly? All that immediately comes to mind are the twins and VV.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:28 |
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citybeatnik posted:It's been ages since I've played the game - do you have any examples of the stuff that aged poorly? All that immediately comes to mind are the twins and VV. Chinatown.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:35 |
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Ah yeah that'd do it.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:37 |
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citybeatnik posted:It's been ages since I've played the game - do you have any examples of the stuff that aged poorly? All that immediately comes to mind are the twins and VV. Some of the radio stuff is really not great too.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:42 |
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Mors Rattus posted:It may be more endemic to American LARP culture. I’d hesitate before characterizing the whole of things like this—after all, Sweden produced Swedracula, so it has to have been there already. I’ve never experienced anything like that in the US either but that’s just because I bail on bad (local) games at the first red flag.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:43 |
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citybeatnik posted:Ah yeah that'd do it. Lesee. I'm going to forget things - Chinatown is bad, especially the weapon merchant who talks in this ridiculously offensive Chop Socky accent that you don't even find other places in area. And really, yeah, just Chinatown too. Yukie would probably be slightly less upsetting if the physics didn't mean she's a walking upskirt shot. Burgess stopped talking to the Nosferatu in Santa Monica when you bring up that Therese and Jeanette are the same person and Tung comments to the effect of 'make a woman a Malkavian and it's double crazy' or something like that. One of the radio ads. We all remember Friggin' Chicken fondly, and rightfully so. We do not remember the rather transphobic ad that advised you to undergo a sex change to avoid your creditors and such like that. It already sounds pretty bad, I know, but it comes off even worse. It was just nice after months of Ericsson and MRH and all to hear somebody who is going to be involved in writing Vampire to look at these things and go, "Oh, ew, no." Dawgstar fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jan 8, 2019 |
# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:44 |
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Watch it, because it's a movie and all your friends are going to see it.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 17:49 |
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Mors Rattus posted:It may be more endemic to American LARP culture. It's endemic to American LARP culture but by no means exclusive. I remember one guy on another site arguing that players who have issues with something a Storyteller was running should just suck it up and only complain once the game is over, and in private. This was in reference to Clanbook: Baali. Some people just want to be the center of attention and demand that other people be their compliant audience. Kurieg fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Jan 8, 2019 |
# ? Jan 8, 2019 18:16 |
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Dawgstar posted:Yukie would probably be slightly less upsetting if the physics didn't mean she's a walking upskirt shot. I liked Yukie's sidequest, particularly the punchline of 'oh yeah there's a WHOLE LOT of insane outside-context madness that is uninterested in your vampire power games. WERESHARK TIME.'
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 19:03 |
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Pretty much every problem with WoD LARPs in the US boil down to gatekeeping. It's been the property of creepy old dudes for so long that not only is no one else allowed it, no one else wants to be allowed in, because they associate it with inappropriate touch and deliberate attempts to alienate outsiders. There is a pretty big divide between WoD LARPs and other kinds of LARPs precisely because of this. It's also why Requiem never took off as a LARP system despite having a much better setup for a social, political-based LARP. Exceptions, of course, abound, but the whole apparatus is definitely haunted by the grim specter of That Guy and I don't know if there's any way to exorcise him.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 19:26 |
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Mendrian posted:Exceptions, of course, abound, but the whole apparatus is definitely haunted by the grim specter of That Guy and I don't know if there's any way to exorcise him. Right, that's what marketing should be striving for, rather than whatever the hell nuWoof just accomplished. I think it can certainly be done through targeted recruitment. Hit up those adjacent non-tainted LARP communities (though I've encountered plenty of edgelords and petty tyrants in boffer games too). Get a local ST group to earn trust with the wider player base, maybe think about transitioning through genre somehow (D&D to Shadowrun to Vampire.) "Oh yeah, those folks ran a fun one-shot Venture Brothers game. Sure I'll try their Requiem one-shot." And, I think that might actually be an easier task than codifying how to gatekeep successfully / ethically. In my experience it's never been as simple as "Just tell the shitlords they aren't welcome." I'm hoping there's some kind of magic bullet that solves the inherent authority/entitlement clusterfuck that seems to follow That Guy, but also worried that yeah - maybe it's a lost cause.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 19:58 |
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All I remember is that dumb Eurolarp that had advertising during the run-up that was basically "Don't come of you're going to say No." Which the people in that larp community understood was entirely in the fictitious advertising but everyone on this side of the ocean was screaming both internally and externally.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 20:16 |
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Honestly I think that american LARP is just a lost cause. nuWW essentially told all the shitlords "yes you are playing the One True Way, all these snowflakes are ruining it with their safe spaces and general disdain for rape/pedophilia/racism" and anyone who was on the fence about maybe looking into it has hopped off and run the other way. That combined with how many people (in my experience) use LARP to passive-aggressively snipe at other people and be the absolute trashfucker they always wish they could be without reprisal because of nerd social fallacies, the only way you'd ever see any real change is through a mass exodus of one group or the other.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 20:19 |
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Yawgmoth posted:to passive-aggressively snipe at other people and be the absolute trashfucker they always wish they could be without reprisal because of nerd social fallacies ...but enough about the internet Seriously though, that's the concern I have for what good gatekeeping would look like. Not only how do you stop people from joining with that mentality. But how do you stop successful individuals / cliques from adopting that mentality during play. What methods can you use to make sure it doesn't infect the staff? And that's before even getting into the question whether the text/themes themselves encourage that kind of "Be a monster" mentality, and if you strip those out, if you're even left with a Vampire game at all.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 20:32 |
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If I ever do run the Mage LARP I’m planning, it’s going to involve all the player characters having Awakened at the same moment, and everyone is going to always have the same amount of XP, no matter when they start playing. That, at least, should avoid some of the powergaming nerdball bullshit that comes with Vampire LARPs. That and being pretty explicit that yeah, while the game is gonna have politics, it’s not just Mean Girls With Fangs and being likeable is just as good a way to get people on your side.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 20:57 |
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cptn_dr posted:If I ever do run the Mage LARP I’m planning, it’s going to involve all the player characters having Awakened at the same moment, and everyone is going to always have the same amount of XP, no matter when they start playing. It seems like Mage, and really any of the other WoD games wouldn't run into as much Vampire LARP fuckery because Vampire is well...Vampire. Also I like to imagine OMage LARP is just a bunch of people dressed like college professors yelling at other people dressed up in robes about how they're doing magic wrong.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 21:26 |
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I would dead rear end play Mean Girls With Fangs especially if folks got bonus XP for dressing up like the 90s/early 00s. Tbh I think LARP suffers from the fact that most STs are just people who like LARP a lot rather than folks who would be skilled STs. This results in a spiral of LARP plot that is written for folk who know LARP plots. There's the general holding pen of elysium where folks hang out and be gothy at each other waiting for an ST's availability to open up, rather than having some kind of Escape Room style mass struggle which isn't combat.Nessus posted:The Great Outdoor Fight is a metaphor for ascension. The Smuckles boy changes the cosmos for he denies the Jeeps their due. I could see the Euthanatos having some kind of ascension challenge which involves taking your best friend to death's door, then beating Death into submission. Orgasm denial to the biggest petit mort ever. Bathed in blood and agony, you stand before an impossibly huge gate, and you lock it shut from the other side. That idea is honestly cool as gently caress and you should deffo use it in a game. Anyway there's a new 420 friendly club in my town and I think I should organize an Extremely Stoned Changeling Game.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 21:35 |
PHIZ KALIFA posted:I could see the Euthanatos having some kind of ascension challenge which involves taking your best friend to death's door, then beating Death into submission. Orgasm denial to the biggest petit mort ever. Bathed in blood and agony, you stand before an impossibly huge gate, and you lock it shut from the other side. Living on the corner of Mage and Catastrophe
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 22:38 |
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Barbed Tongues posted:So yeah, stuff like that Ataxerxes. What do you guys do to treat those ^^ particular poisons? Either in convincing the culprits the behavior is bad, or in terms of better identifying which players need to be efficiently severed from the community? I'll admit that SweDracula's antics have tarnished my perception of the Euro-/Nordic- LARP styles a bit. So, longer post later as its almost midnight here. The first thing about larp in Finland, and please note Finland, Sweden, Denmar, Norway etc do it in a different way (about those later) is that there is no central organization as such. There was a society, of which remains only a website (The larp calendar, http://kalenteri.larp.fi) that has a calendar about coming games. There are Facebook sites also where you might find games, some in English (I will link those later). So if I want to run a, let's say Vampire chronicle, I will get some mates together who will write the game (and, in most games, the characters), invent mechanics for it and rent some space. Here, if you can find a youth association to help you (and many of those have larpers in the staff) you can rent a cottage/campsite/etc for peanuts. Also, since the way our laws work (more about that later), the organizers are almost never in the risk of huge lawsuits unless they commit actual crimes, the sort of which in the US are called felonies. Now you have a story, characters, some mechanics (I have not heard of anyone using Minds Eye Theatre for anything this side of the year 2000), characters, a place and hopefully a website. Then you advertise in Facebook and elsewhere, take sign ups, and, at the actual date, run the game. The game ends, you have an afterparty in the sauna (of course there is sauna, this is Finland), a few beers and that is that. Most games are one-shots so characters don't transfer between them. There painting I linked was about a character from a trilogy, who was introduced in game 2, killed between games 2 and 3 in a chat rpg with the GM's (and at my request) and who returned as a Sin-Eater (and died finally) in game 3. Trilogies are not the norm, but they are not super rare either. And as characters don't usually pass between games (and many games don''t have experience mechanics) it discourages the worst munchkins from attending. So your character is Fight McKillStrong, leader of the local Brujah? So what? In the next games of the series that character isn't there. Of course there are people who have some sort of prestige in the scene, but as there is no central organization it relies pretty much on their personal charisma, possible fame of having made games that many participants liked and a past history of either not doing anything dodgy or taking sincere efforts to rectify past behaviour. I do note that I was an active larper at the late 90's and had a long break at about 2002-2010 (lived abroad and was later drawn back to larping by friends) and have gotten into the scene pretty much only after that. There has been a case of person being convicted for rape and spending time in prison, after they abused positions of trust to have sex with teenagers, but the acts he was convicted for happened during the time I was not larping. I am not saying the Finnish larp scene is without problems (and please note I am only talking about Finland here), they are simply different problems from the ones in the US. Most games nowadays have a designated harassment person who is there to make certain that there is someone to intervene if it happens and no GM is currently at hand, many also have a "safe-room", a room with a couch, cookies and coffee that is entirely off-game and that you can go into if the game gets too depressing or otherwise unpleasant. Also almost all games have a mechanic where you raise a fist to your forehead and say "offgame", after which you can walk away from a situation and that is that, many games nowadays have safewords if the content is heavy at all, there are also other such mechanics that I don't know the details of. Edit: Also, were are a country of only 6 million people, and maybe a few hundred to a few thousand larpers total and the country isn't that big, compared to the US. Word tends to spread rather fast, both good or bad.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 23:19 |
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Barbed Tongues posted:I'll admit that SweDracula's antics have tarnished my perception of the Euro-/Nordic- LARP styles a bit. Also, "Nordic larp" is a term that in here is used for a specific type of larp, in terms of numbers the games I would count as "Nordic" larps are a minority. Nordic larp is usually a game that has a strong particular them, for example Halat Hisar (http://www.nordicrpg.fi/halathisar/concept/) was a game about opression in an alternative modern day Finland where it was like the Palestine of our world. This is from the website of the Finnish run of Halat Hisar: "Larp is a co-creative, participatory artform. Most fundamentally, it’s the art of experience: You are a Finnish student living under the occupation regime. You cross the checkpoint, you are arrested by the soldiers and subjected to interrogation. You have a character, a role to play, but how you play it is up to you. There’s no script, and surprising things can happen, just as in real life." I did an NPC gig in it, and contrary to the quotation it was heavily scripted. From my personal point of view Nordic larp - style games sacrifice player agence for the sake of more impactfull drama and while some people like that not everyone does. For quite a few larpers in Finland "Nordic larp" is almost a swear word, as playing a game mostly about some form of suffering (state opression, family violence, drug addiction, AIDS etc) is not what they want. Also, NPC's are an important feature here. Normally you pay a fee to attend a game (it can be anything from a few euroes to up to a few hundred, but that high is rare and usually means a multi-day game in a mansion or something) and get a character (in some cases several if yours get killed during the game). People who only play NPC roles usually pay nothing to attend, get food and accomondation for free and usually some bennies besides (first in the sauna, some free beers, better/more food etc). Some games have no NPC', some have more NPC's than actual characters.
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# ? Jan 8, 2019 23:58 |
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I know how NPC teams work in boffer larps (being the monsters to kill, mostly), I assume that in this case NPCs have more scripted/prescribed roles that they fulfill to keep poo poo moving along rather than pursuing their personal bliss?
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 00:16 |
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joylessdivision posted:It seems like Mage, and really any of the other WoD games wouldn't run into as much Vampire LARP fuckery because Vampire is well...Vampire. HAHAHA. Mage LARP becomes the type of situation that ends up discussed re: powerlevels, stacking +1s and stupid applications of spells, and using your dots to ruin the fun of other people. Changeling becomes 'pretty princess the trauma gangbang'. And my only experience with Dreaming LARP can be best described as 'Changeling the Child Porn' due to physical relationships between childling PCs and adult wilder and grump PCs. Forsaken can't get its head out of Apocalypse's rear end. NWoD LARP suffers from power creep badly; you can build characters that do max successes (which translates to max damage) on a 2 (you only fail on a 1, or if draw a 1, or your pool doesn't surpass a default number decided for the game; the book recmmends 10 with every 5 a success, but 8/4 gives the best mapping to dice successesyou without much XP invested into it. I've watched NWoD LARPs turn into 'how can I get all the stackable +1s to this'. It's even worse in a large org like the MES, where approvals are arbitrary and someone in one city might get no pushback for a concept, while the same concept (or similar enough, using say the same bloodline/covenant combo for example) might be denied on the grounds that 'the ST doesn't feel it's appropriate' despite there being ten other similar concepts and combos of stuff in the global game The issue is the people. LARP can be great, but you have to vet your group well.
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 00:53 |
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Ataxerxes posted:words I've had the opposite experience in terms of LARP length here in the states. Most of the Vampire games I've heard of / played in have been serial games. One-shot games are far rarer, especially for Requiem/Masquerade, and seem harder to recruit for, though not always. Turning that on its head sounds like it may be necessary. A serial LARP might need to be the advanced form that can only be supported when you have a robust community that has proven its health through regular one-offs and occasional trilogies. And yeah, limited scope games would get rid of the many Powercreep and Permadeath problems serial games suffer which would go a long way in gatekeeping by itself. Also, thank you for correcting me on my Nordic LARP usage. I was definitely using it as an overgeneralized stand in for non-American styles.
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 01:14 |
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Barbed Tongues posted:I've had the opposite experience in terms of LARP length here in the states. Most of the Vampire games I've heard of / played in have been serial games. One-shot games are far rarer, especially for Requiem/Masquerade, and seem harder to recruit for, though not always. Turning that on its head sounds like it may be necessary. A serial LARP might need to be the advanced form that can only be supported when you have a robust community that has proven its health through regular one-offs and occasional trilogies. And yeah, limited scope games would get rid of the many Powercreep and Permadeath problems serial games suffer which would go a long way in gatekeeping by itself. I've been out of LARPing for a long time, but remembering my time in the 90s and early 00s it did seem like a large portion of the problems emerged from the combination of divergent xp levels and long term social cliquishness that came from that serial format. I remember our larp (which was a serial ongoing oWoD larp generally) did a short term alternate setting over a summer without any xp or progression. Even though that larp group wasn't (usually) overly toxic, it was sort of interesting to see how radically some players changed their behavior when the game wasn't carrying a massive degree of story/social/xp baggage. One shots or short terms in the US seemed to be more of a convention thing than something that was/is its own beast. I know some of my friends from the LARP days now have a group that goes and runs convention larps that are one night or a few night events with premades. I don't really know how they're structured these days beyond that though.
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 03:24 |
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Short terms should honestly be the norm for a LARP. Regular, long-format games are just lovely formats for political games. Cliques are good in a political game! But when it runs for 7 years, it means nobody ever has a chance to start over or try something new. The problem is everybody likes what they accomplish and are scared to try again.
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 05:47 |
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Ataxerxes posted:I am not saying the Finnish larp scene is without problems (and please note I am only talking about Finland here), they are simply different problems from the ones in the US. Most games nowadays have a designated harassment person who is there to make certain that there is someone to intervene if it happens and no GM is currently at hand, many also have a "safe-room", a room with a couch, cookies and coffee that is entirely off-game and that you can go into if the game gets too depressing or otherwise unpleasant. Also almost all games have a mechanic where you raise a fist to your forehead and say "offgame", after which you can walk away from a situation and that is that, many games nowadays have safewords if the content is heavy at all, there are also other such mechanics that I don't know the details of. Worth noting that this is a fairly recent development, and the Finnish LARP scene covered for a serial rapist for over 20+ years.
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 08:13 |
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Kemper Boyd posted:Worth noting that this is a fairly recent development, and the Finnish LARP scene covered for a serial rapist for over 20+ years. As I stated in my post I have been "active" in the whole thing for about the past 8 years or so, what with having lived away from Finland. And by active I mean mostly attending games when invited or doing NPC gigs, I am not a game organizer myself. Also, there is no such thing as "the Finnish larp scene" as a singular entity. There are some very local groups in some cities that have almost nothing to do with any other groups, yet they have been running games for years if not decades. Some of these groups are so isolated enough by geography that the people in them don't bother attending the games of other groups as it is seen as too much of a problem. And then there is the Finnish speaking / Swedish speaking split, with only limited cross attendance between groups. People from cities that are not near Helsinki (the capital) tend to be sucpicious of anything invented there, outside the larp scene also. The people who covered for that person are active and visible characters, but stating that the entirety of the Finnish larping body did so is misleading. There are active larp organizers outside Helsinki who absolutely refuse to be lumped together with some groups inside it, and many larpers in Helsinki have no idea what is going on in Oulu, Joensuu or Jyväskylä.
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 10:06 |
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Barbed Tongues posted:I've had the opposite experience in terms of LARP length here in the states. Most of the Vampire games I've heard of / played in have been serial games. One-shot games are far rarer, especially for Requiem/Masquerade, and seem harder to recruit for, though not always. Turning that on its head sounds like it may be necessary. A serial LARP might need to be the advanced form that can only be supported when you have a robust community that has proven its health through regular one-offs and occasional trilogies. And yeah, limited scope games would get rid of the many Powercreep and Permadeath problems serial games suffer which would go a long way in gatekeeping by itself. No worries, the terms are a soup as there is no cross-country central larp authority of any sort. To my understanding there were attempts at US style serial Vampire larps sometime in the late 90's but those haven't really been a thing in the time I have been active. In general terms many games also don't have experience mechanics or a system for mechanically advancing your character. The Chronicles of Darkness trilogy I was in had a very thin mechanic, with every player having several playing cards they used to power the powers the character had, and a few powers each. Ingame, if you used a power on someone you would say "I'm using a power on you/on X" and draw a card without showing the face to the target. The target could use a card of their own to counter that power and if they did they would draw one and then both players would show the cards and act out the result according to the value of the cards. For example, in the second game I used an 8 of Spades with my ghoul character to indicate Potence, and could, ingame, punch out a bunch of mook NPC's, only to have my rear end handed to me by the big bad who had an Ace of Spades for Potence-like power.
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 10:19 |
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can an abyssal entity be an emotion that doesnt exist
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 10:29 |
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Tollymain posted:can an abyssal entity be an emotion that doesnt exist They can be bad math and a book. So why not an emotion?
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 11:35 |
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Tollymain posted:can an abyssal entity be an emotion that doesnt exist Abyssal entities can be whatever they want as long as it's metaphysically horrible. Also, Exalted has a Third Circle Demon, Lypothymie, who is an infectious emotion unique to Hell. Compass: Malfeas was one of the best 2e books and Lypothymie is great.
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 12:50 |
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# ? May 25, 2024 14:05 |
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Nessus posted:So yeah we're Moros, but not drastically Ray: Syndicate Roast Beef: Virtual Adept Pat: Child of Gaia (he has the rage for it) Teodore: Toreadore Cornelius: Order of Hermes Philipe: Is 5 Molly: Redeemer Lyle: Feckin' Brujah, innit?
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# ? Jan 9, 2019 19:01 |